Joburg is a slum, not ‘world class’ city

Ten years ago, the City of Johannesburg won an appeal at the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) against a ruling which found that its claim to be a financially stable “world class African city” was misleading.

In reinstating the ad campaign, the ASA’s appeal panel found that it was not misleading, after the city produced a report from the Auditor-General, as well as assessments from ratings agencies Fitch and Moody’s that it was financially stable.

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Given that the municipality has now desperately resorted to roping in traffic cops to try and collar rates defaulters at roadblocks, it seems highly unlikely the claim of financial stability carries any weight at all.

Sadly, almost mockingly, the city’s slogan of being a “world class African city” is frequently paired with an image of the skyline of the Joburg CBD, which is today nothing more than a festering and spreading slum.

The focus has been on the rot in the Joburg CBD following the fire in a hijacked building in Marshalltown in which more than 70 people died… but the slow-motion collapse of the “City of Gold” has been in process since the late 1980s, when the exodus of businesses began to areas like Parktown, Rosebank and Sandton.

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Crime and grime accelerated that flight – while the authorities at all levels of government did nothing. That then created an anarchic atmosphere in which rent boycotts and building hijackings became the order of the day.

Law firm by Vermaak Marshall Wellbeloved (VMW) believes hundreds of property owners in the CBD and surrounds have been dispossessed over the last three decades.

Attempts to save the inner city – such as FNB’s Bank City development – and the establishment of various business precincts – have done little to stem to tide of lawlessness. It may be too late to do anything other than accept Joburg city is a world class slum.

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